Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1887-06-27

has rejected that Gospel for another, who
is thoroughly satisfied, and helped, and
eontented in his skepticism, and l will
take car tomorrow and ride five hundred
miles to see HIM. The full power of the
Gospel has not yet been touched. As q
sportsman throws up his hand and catches
the ball flying through the air, just so
easily will this gospel after while catch
this round world flying from its orbit and
bring it back to the heart of Christ Give
it full swing and it will pardon every sin,
heal every wound, cure every trouble,
emancipate every slave, and ransom every
nation. Ye Christian men and women
who 20 out this afternoon to do Christian
work, as you 90 into the Sunday schools,
and lay preaching stations, and the penl-
tentiaries, and the asylums, want you to
feel that you carry in your hand weapon,
compared with which the lightning has no
speed, and avalanches have no heft, and
the thunderbolts of heaven have no power;
it is the arrow of the omnipotent gospel.
Take careful aim. Pull the arrow clear
back until the head strikes the bow.
THEN LEI IT FLY.
And may the slain of the Lord be many.
Again: if you want to be skilltul In
spiritual hunting you must hunt in un-
fIeuuented and secluded places. Why
does the hunter 90 three or four days in
the Pennsylvania forests or over Raquette
Lake into the wilds of the Adlrondacks!
1t is the only way to do. The deer are
shy, and one ''bang" of the gun clears the
forests. From the California stage you
see, as yeu 20 over the plains, here and
there, a coyote trotting along, almost
within range Of the gun-sOmething quite
within range of it. No one cares for that;
it is worthless. The good game is hidden
and secluded. Every hunter knows that.
So, many of the souls that will be of most
worth for Christ, and of most value to the
Church, are secluded. They do not come
in your way. You will have to go where
they are. Yonder they are down in that
cellar, yonder they are up in that garret.
| Far away from the door Of any church,
the Gospel arrow has not been
pointed at them. The tract distributor
and the city missionary sometimes Just
catch a glimpse of them, as the hunter
through the trees gets momentary sight
ofa partridge or rOebuck. The trouble is
we are waiting for the game to come to us.
| We are not good hunters. We are stand
| ing in Schermerhorn street, expecting that
the timid antelope will come up and eat
out of our hand. We are expecting that
the prairie-fowl will light on our church
steeple. 1t is not their habit. If the
Church should wait ten millions Of years
| for the world to come in and be saved, it
/ -, hn
come What the Church wants now is to
lift their feet from damask OttOmans, and
put them in the stirrups. We want a pull
on wheels. The Church wants not so
much cushions as it wants
| SADDLE-BAGS AND ARROWS.
We have got to put aside the gown and
the kid-gloves, and put on the hunting
shirt. We have been fishing so long in
the brooks that run under the shadow of
the Church that the fish know us, and they
avoid the hook, and escape as soon as we
come to the bank, while yOnder is Upper
Saranac and Big Tapper's Lake, where the
first swing of the Gospel net would break
it for the multitude of the fishes. There
is outside work to he done. What is that
| see in the backwOOds? 1t is tent. The
| hunters have have made clearing and
camped out: What do they care if they
have wet feet, or if they have nothing but
pine branch for a pillow, or for the
northeast storm? If moose in the dark
ness steps into the lake 20 drink they heai
it right away. II loon cry in the mid
night, they hear it. So in the service of
God we have exposed work. We have got
/ - VI
ting all our care on the seventy thousand
people of Brooklyn, who, they say, come
to church. What are we doing
for the seven hundred thousand that do
not come? Have they no souls? Are they
sinless that they need no PARDON Are
there no dead in their houses that they
need no comfort? Are they cut Off from
God, to 20 into eternity-no wing to bear
them, no light to cheer them, no welcome
to greet them? hear to-day surging up
from the lower depths of Brooklyn a grOan
that comes through our Christian assem-
blages and through our Christian churches;
and it blots out all this scene from my
eyes to-day, as by the mists of a great
Niagara, for the dash and the plunge of
these great torrents of life dropping down
into the fathOmleSs and laundering abyss
of suffering and woe. | sometimes think
that Just rs God blotted out the Church of
Thyatira and COrinth and Laodicea, be-
cause of their sloth and stolidity, He will
blot out American end English Christian
ity, and raise on the ruins
A sTALwART, wIDE-AwAKE MISSIONARY
CHURCH,
that can take the full meaning of that
command; Go into all the world, and
preach the Gospel TO every creature. lie
that believeth and is bap aptized shall be
saved, and he that believeth not shall be
damned"
remark, further, if you want to sue
ceed in Gospel hunting You must have
courage. If the hunter stand with trem-
bling hand or shoulder that flinches with
fear, instead of his taking the Oatamount
the catamount takes him. What would
become of the Greenlander If, when out
hunting for the bear, he should stand
shivering with terror on an iceberg? What
would have become of Du Chaillu and
Livingstone in the African thicket with a
faint heart and weak knee? When a
panther comes within twenty PAGES of you,
and it has its eye on you, and it has
squatted for the fearful spring, STEADY
| there"
Courage, q We spiritual hunters There
are great monsters of iniquity prowling
all around about tbe community. Shall
we not, in the strength of God, 60 forth
and combat them? We not only need
more heart, but more backbone. What is
the Church of God that it should fear to
look in the eye any transgression There
is the Bengal tiger Of drunkenness that
prowls around, and instead of attacking
it, how many of us hide under the church
pew or the communion tsble2 There is 90
much invested in it we are afraid to as
sault it; millions Of dollars in barrels, in
watts, in spigots, in corkscrews, in gin pal
aces with marble floors and Italian-tOp
tables, and chased ice-coolers, and in the
strychnine, and the logwoOd, and the tar
taric acid, and the n4X vomica, that 90 TO
make up our pure American drinks. /
looked with wondering eyes on the "Hei-
delberg tun." 1t is the great liquor vat Of
Germany, which is said to hold eight hun
dred hogsheads of wine, and only three
times in hundred years has it been filled.
But, as stood and looked at il, l said TO
| .nr a,rbf brp1r rod